Quantifying Collaboration in Synchronous Document Editing

Collaborative synchronous writing tools like Google Docs and Etherpad let multiple users edit the same document and see each others edits in near real-time to simplify collaboration and avoid merge-conflicts. These tools are used extensively across many domains, including education, in both research and industry. The very nature of needing to constantly synchronize state between multiple users means that very granular editing data is automatically captured and stored. In theory, this data could provide important insights into the editing process, the contributions of the different users, how the text developed over time, and other questions relevant to researchers studying writing from different theoretical and methodological angles. However, this extreme granularity of the data (down to individual key presses), makes analysis very complex. Most of the research focused on automatic analysis of collaborative writing to date has focused on asynchronous writing, and looked at the "diffs" between one editing session and the next. In this paper, we present a method and a tool to construct informative operations from text data, as well as preliminary metrics for measuring the collaborative writing process. Additionally, our method adds to previous work in that it can be used to assess the writing during the writing process rather than just being applied to an end product

Web-based collaborative writing in L2 contexts: Methodological insights from text mining

The increasingly widespread use of social software (e.g., Wikis, Google Docs) in second language (L2) settings has brought a renewed attention to collaborative writing. Although the current methodological approaches to examining collaborative writing are valuable to understand L2 students’ interactional patterns or perceived experiences, they can be insufficient to capture the quantity and quality of writing in networked online environments. Recently, the evolution of techniques for analyzing big data has transformed many areas of life, from information search to marketing. However, the use of data and text mining for understanding writing processes in language learning contexts is largely underexplored. In this article, we synthesize the current methodological approaches to researching collaborative writing and discuss how new text mining tools can enhance research capacity. These advanced methods can help researchers to elucidate collaboration processes by analyzing user behaviors (e.g., amount of editing, participation equality) and their link to writing outcomes across large numbers of exemplars. We introduce key research examples to illustrate this potential and discuss the implications of integrating the tools for L2 collaborative writing research and pedagogy

A Case Study of Organizational and Curricular Attributes for Interprofessional Education: A Model for Sustainable Curriculum Delivery

Background: In health and social care (HASC) professional education, interprofessional competencies are optimally developed by engaging in interprofessional education (IPE) activities that are delivered sustainably along a continuum. Ultimately, active engagement in IPE is meant to prepare future practitioners for interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP), which leads to improved patient/client and community-oriented outcomes. Methods and Findings: This qualitative case study explores how four Canadian post-secondary institutions deliver IPE within their HASC professional education programmatic structures. Data were collected from institutional websites, publicly available IPE relevant records and documents, and interviews with coordinators and faculty/facilitators of IPE curriculum. Data were inductively analyzed to generate relevant themes, followed by a deductive analysis guided by the five accreditation standards domains identified in the Accreditation of Interprofessional Health Education (AIPHE) projects. Analyses of the data resulted in five attributes: 1) central administrative unit, 2) longitudinal and integrative program, 3) theoretically informed curriculum design, 4) student-centred pedagogy, and 5) patient/client-oriented approach. Conclusions: Using these attributes and guided by AIPHE’s accreditation standards domains, an organizational-curricular model for sustainable IPE is proposed, through which we assert that IPE reinforced through these organizational and curricular supports reflects successful programming, leading to patient/client-oriented outcomes

Live Collaboration in App Development

Real-time collaborative editing systems are increasing in popularity, having moved from document editing software to the world of software development. Live collaboration (or real-time collaboration) refers to a synchronous cooperation mechanism, allowing for concurrent changes to be made to the same object by multiple individuals. In recent years, many traditional software development tools have started to incorporate live collaboration. The motivation behind this fast expansion comes from a series of specific use cases propelled even more by the current COVID-19 pandemic, which forces people to stay at home and work in a remote manner. This hinders the possibilities for cooperation between team members during the development of a software project. In this work, we address this problem in the context of the OutSystems low-code platform, and we aim to determine how collaborative features, including real-time collaboration, can be implemented in OutSystems tools to enhance its collaborative experience for users developing applications. In this context, collaboration is defined as the processes and actions that take place between people during software development projects with the OutSystems platform, when trying to execute their work tasks. To test the ideal experience for collaborative features, such as real-time collaboration, in the OutSystems ecosystem, we analyzed the current state of the art of the research done in the fields of CSCW (Computer-supported CooperativeWork) and UX (User Experience) and experimented with other industry standard software to analyze their collaborative features. Because features are made for people, we then moved to the end-users and interviewed several users of the OutSystems platform to understand their issues when cooperating with other people, and finally we generated a series of designs to try to address their issues. These designs were conceptualized and materialized into actual mockups that were part of several usability tests, done with OutSystems users, to realize their potential in enhancing the collaboration experience when using OutSystems.Os sistemas de edição colaborativa em tempo-real estão a ganhar popularidade, tendo transitado do mundo do software da edição de documentos para o mundo do desenvolvimento de software. O título do documento, "Live collaboration in app development", refere-se a mecanismos de colaboração síncrona, que permitem alterações concorrentes a um mesmo objecto por parte de vários intervenientes. Nos últimos anos, várias ferramentas tradicionais de desenvolvimento de software começaram a incorporar colaboração em tempo-real. Esta rápida expansão é motivada por vários casos de uso, que ganham uma maior relevância na atualidade devido à pandemia da COVID-19, em que muitas pessoas têm de trabalhar de forma remota a partir de casa. Esta situação dificulta as possibilidades de cooperação entre colegas de equipa num projeto de desenvolvimento de software. Este trabalho aborda estes problemas no contexto da plataforma de low-code da OutSystems e pretende-se determinar se e como certas funcionalidades colaborativas, como colaboração em tempo-real, podem ser implementadas na plataforma da OutSystems de forma a melhorar a experiência colaborativa para os seus utilizadores. Neste contexto, colaboração refere-se aos processos e ações que ocorrem entre as pessoas durante os projetos de desenvolvimento de software com a plataforma da OutSystems. Para definir e testar a experiência ideal destas funcionalidades colaborativas, como colaboração em tempo-real, no ecossistema OutSystems, analisámos o estado da arte atual da investigação feita nas áreas de CSCW (Computer-supported CooperativeWork) e UX (User Experience) e experimentámos outros programas disponíveis no mercado para analisar as suas funcionalidades colaborativas. Como o software é feito para pessoas, entrevistámos vários utilizadores da plataforma OutSystems para compreender os seus problemas ao cooperarem com outras pessoas no contexto OutSystems e conceptualizámos várias ideias para tentar resolver esses problemas. Essas ideias foram depois materializadas em protótipos reais que fizeram parte de vários testes de usabilidade para perceber o seu potencial em melhorar a experiência de colaboração em OutSystems

The Use of Video in the Occupational Therapy Graduate Classroom

As the cost of graduate education continues to rise and occupational therapy moves toward a value-based reimbursement system, the development of clinical reasoning skills in a short timeframe becomes increasingly more important in occupational therapy education. Incorporating the use of video into occupational therapy curricula is an effective method of introducing and reinforcing material, developing critical thinking skills, and refining skills of interpersonal communication, observation, and documentation. Determining which technology to use, and how to integrate it effectively into a course, can be overwhelming for instructors, especially those new to using video applications. This article introduces various types of video technology and provides practical examples for integration into the graduate occupational therapy classroom. Potential benefits and limitations are discussed for each type of technology

Flexibility chart 2.0: An accessible visual tool to evaluate flexibility resources in power systems

ABSTRACT: Various aspects of power system flexibility are evaluated within the multi-country study framework of IEA Wind Task 25. Grid components and actions which have been adopted for enhancing flexibility in different areas, countries, regions are addressed, as well as how Transmission System Operators, Independent System Operators, Utilities intend to manage variable generation in their operating strategies. A visual assessment to evaluate the diversity of flexibility sources, called a “flexibility chart”, is further developed to illustrate several flexibility parameters (e.g., hydropower, pumped hydro, gas turbine, combined heat and power, interconnection and battery) in a polygonal radar (fan-shaped) chart. This enhanced version of the Flexibility Chart is an “at-a-glance” and “easy-to-understand” tool to show how to estimate the potential of flexibility resources in a given country or area, and is accessible for non-technical experts. The Flexibility Chart 2.0 is also a useful tool to compare the past and future flexibility of a system. Comparing the historical change of flexibility resources may not only be helpful to discuss energy policy in regions with high installed variable renewable generation, but also to contribute to the discussion in other regions where renewables have not been widely adopted yet.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Co-authoring with structured annotations

Most co-authoring tools support basic annotations, such as edits and comments that are anchored at specific locations in the document. However, they do not support metacommentary about a document (such as an author’s summary of modifications) which gets separated from the document, often in the body of email messages. This causes unnecessary overhead in the write-review-edit workflow inherent in co-authoring. We present document-embedded structured annotations called “bundles ” that incorporate the meta-commentary into a unified annotation model that meets a set of annotation requirements we identified through a small field investigation. A usability study with 20 subjects evaluated the annotation reviewing stage of coauthoring and showed that annotation bundles in our highfidelity prototype reduced reviewing time and increased accuracy, compared to a system that only supports edits and comments. Author Keywords Collaborative writing, collaborative authoring, structure